WITH THE RUBBER pads of the aluminum crutches wedged under his arms, Rick swung himself across the dark room to the door. He paused by his workstation there. Reached down to touch the keys of his Mac. The monitor woke and glowed in the shadows. There was a new e-mail—another note from Molly.
For a moment, he let himself remember her. The light brown hair tumbling down to frame the high cheekbones on her robust, delicately freckled face. The tall, shapely figure. The smart, strong gaze. He remembered the last time he had kissed her—four months ago—the feel of her lips. The last words he had spoken to her, face-to-face:
I never expected this, Molly.
He meant he had never expected a romance between them. They had always just been friends with a lot in common. She was the child of a local college professor, like he was. She was an athlete, like he was . . .
Or, that is, like he used to be.
An acid bitterness went through his heart and Rick forced the memories away. He deleted the e-mail without reading it. Molly had not given up on their relationship—not yet—but she would get the message sooner or later. He’d make sure of it.
He opened the door and, propped on his crutches, swung out into the hall.
He squinted as the morning light hit him. He was surprised how bright it was. He hadn’t seen it in his bedroom, not at all. His mother had set up the new bedroom for him on the ground floor so he wouldn’t have to negotiate the stairs anymore with his busted-up legs. He kept the curtains in there pulled shut twenty-four/seven. He didn’t want anyone to look in at him from the sidewalk. He didn’t want anyone to see him sitting there playing his video games hour after hour after hour—sleeping the days away—doing nothing—a useless cripple.
He swung himself down the hall to the kitchen. He could smell eggs cooking, bacon, too. It suddenly occurred to him he was hungry.
His mother was at the stove with her back to him when he came in. She didn’t turn around—probably didn’t hear him enter over the crackling of the eggs in the frying pan and the bacon sizzling. But Raider saw him—his kid brother, Wade, eight years old. Raider was sitting at the round kitchen table in the corner. When he saw his big brother come in, he lit up like a Christmas tree. Big, big smile on his round face, blue eyes bright and beaming. That was typical Raider: no matter what happened, he could always find a reason to grin. Kid probably had some kind of weird psychological condition or something.
“Hey, Rick!” he said. He sounded as glad to see him as if they’d been apart for months instead of a few hours.
At the sound of Raider’s voice, Rick’s mom turned and looked at Rick over her shoulder. She smiled, too, but she wasn’t as good at it as Raider. No matter how hard she tried, Rick could see the sorrow in her eyes. He could see it in the way the corners of her mouth always turned down. Her face—round like Raider’s—was pale and saggy. No makeup. No energy. Not at all like she used to be, like she was in the old days—the old days being five months ago, before Rick’s father tossed their twenty-year-old marriage in the garbage and ran off, no one knew where, with some old flame of his.
“Well!” Mom said, trying to put some feeling in her voice. “You came out of your room!”
Rick only nodded. He hobbled to the refrigerator.
“Will wonders never cease?” his mother went on. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll even shave.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Rick muttered. “I just got hungry, that’s all.”
“Mom’s making eggs!” said Raider, as if he were delivering news that World War III was over and the good guys had won.
“Wow,” said Rick, but his voice was expressionless. Leaning on his crutches, he pulled open the refrigerator door and snagged a bottle of orange juice. Carrying it clumsily by the bottle neck, he thumped his way back to the kitchen table.
“I’ll get you a glass!” said Raider—and he was off on the mission before Rick could stop him. He practically ran to the cupboard. Grabbed the glass like it was the baton in a relay race. Came barreling back to the table to set it down beside the juice bottle.
“Thanks,” Rick managed to say. He set his crutches against the wall and dropped into a chair.
The kid kept hanging over him, though, all hopeful and eager. For what? What did he think Rick was going to do for him? Toss the football around with him in the backyard? Teach him some gridiron moves like he used to? All that was over now. He couldn’t be that kind of big brother anymore—a hero a younger brother could look up to and imitate. Those days were finished. The kid just never learned, that’s all.
“Hey, I know: maybe you could get some exercise today,” Raider suggested helpfully. “The doctor says if you exercise enough, you’ll get the strength in your legs back, then you won’t have to use the crutches anymore.”
Rick poured himself some juice and drank. “Aw, what do doctors know?”
“Uh . . . doctoring?” said Raider.
Rick smiled in spite of himself. It was impossible not to like the runt.
“Sit down and eat your breakfast,” said their mother. She set a plate with eggs, bacon, and toast on the table for Raider.
“Rick can have those,” said Raider. “He’s hungry. I’ll get the next batch.”
“Sit down and eat, punk, or you’ll get the Crutch of Doom,” said Rick.
“Not the Crutch of Doom!” cried Raider in mock horror. But he sat down and started eating his eggs.
Rick and his mother exchanged a look. She lifted her chin at him—a little gesture of thanks for not being cruel to his kid brother. She knew it was hard for Rick to be nice to anyone anymore. And she knew Raider worshipped the ground Rick walked on. Or hobbled on.
“I’ll make some more for you,” she said and moved back to the stove.
Rick’s eyes hung on her retreating figure for a moment. Her sad, slumped figure, still in her bathrobe, her graying hair uncombed, all out of place. She never looked like that when Dad was still here . . . but there was no point thinking about that anymore, was there? Those days were over, too. Dad was gone.
His eyes moved away from her—but it didn’t matter where he looked. There was something in every direction that brought the situation home to him. Over there in the corner of the kitchen counter, for instance, there was a glass bowl full of unpaid bills. Rick could see the red writing on them: Second Warning. Urgent Notice. Final Warning. Soon the debt collectors would be after them, calling at all hours, ringing the doorbell, hounding them. Or the electricity would be turned off or the bank would come to take the house away. Maybe all those things together.
His gaze moved on—and he could see through the kitchen doorway into the dining room beyond. There on the sideboard were photographs, snapshots in frames. He couldn’t really make them out from where he was sitting, but that didn’t matter. He knew what was in them. They were pictures of his dad and mom with their arms around each other, smiling happily at the camera, their two sons nearby. And pictures of him, Rick, proud and straight and strong in his football uniform, holding a ball, striking a quarterback pose, looking like the local hero he was, ready to head off for Syracuse and a full scholarship and college glory . . .
Was that only a few short months ago? It was. A few short months—and another lifetime. He’d been the big man at Putnam Hills High School then. Six-foot-two, broad-shouldered, muscular. Captain Hunky, the girls called him, on account of his sandy-blond hair, his even features, and his intense blue eyes, full of feeling. Good grades. More friends than he could name. As many girls as he could handle. And on the football field? A star, pure and simple. The quarterback, Number 12. His teammates, his Lions, would have followed him anywhere. No matter how far down they were in a game, no matter how outmatched, if Number 12 said to them, “Don’t worry. We’re going to win this,” they didn’t worry and they did win it. They knew that nothing could stop the man under center when he was on his game. Even on the rare occasions when Rick got sacked, when some 250-pound lineman barreled into his midsection and laid him out flat on his back, even then, when some lesser quarterback might have lain in the grass for thirty seconds or so watching the twinkling stars and twittering birdies dance around in the air above his dazed head, Rick would leap to his feet while the defender was still doing his sack dance. He would spit in the hash marks defiantly and swagger back into the huddle—and the whole team would swagger with him. Because he was Rick Dial—he was Number 12—and they would follow him anywhere.
Rick turned his eyes from the snapshots.
She oughta throw that stuff away, he thought. She ought to throw away every photo taken before Dad left and before the accident turned him, Rick, into the cripple he was. Why wallow in what they’d had and lost? Why not just forget the past and deal with the facts as they were now?
He was still gazing in the direction of the pictures, gazing into space, when his mother plunked a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast in front of him. He thanked her and lowered his head to begin to eat, but he could feel her, still standing over him, looking down.
“Raider’s right, you know,” she said softly after a moment. “It wouldn’t kill you to get some exercise. You ought to go outside at least and get some air.”
“Don’t start, Ma, okay? I just want to have some breakfast,” Rick said.
“You can’t spend every day playing video games and nothing else.”
“Sure I can. It just takes a little effort, that’s all.” Rick concentrated even harder on eating his eggs, but all the same he was aware his mother was still there, still looking down at him.
“Rick . . . ,” she began.
A hot gust of anger went through him. He’d had enough. He tossed his fork down on the plate hard enough to make it clatter. He started to look up. He was about to tell his mother to back off and leave him alone, quit nagging him all the time. But before he could speak, he caught a glimpse of Raider. He saw the way the kid was staring at him, the freckles on his round cheeks standing out as he turned pale, the smile draining out of his eyes as he realized that yet another argument was about to start, and that his big brother—his lifelong hero—was about to disappoint him again.
Rick got control of himself just in time. He didn’t want to torture the kid. Or his mother either, for that matter. He loved them both—more than he could say—it was a warm, pulsing ache inside him. He loved them, but they just didn’t understand. He just wanted to be left alone, that’s all.
He looked up at his mother, into her damp, sorrowful eyes.
“Okay,” he said with a sigh finally. “Okay, Mom, sure. I’ll take a walk. Or a limp. Whatever.”
Mom managed a tight-lipped smile. She nodded at him. “Good,” she said. “You don’t want to be on those crutches your whole life, after all.”
What difference does it make? he thought. No matter how strong my legs get, they’ll never be strong enough. I’ll never play football again, not like before. I’ll never be what I was going to be. So why bother?
But—because he really did love her—he willed himself to keep his mouth shut. As his mother finally turned away from him, he looked across the bright kitchen at the window over the sink. He could see outside into the sunlit morning. He could see through the branches of the cherry tree to the front yard, and beyond the front yard to the street. He could see beams of sun falling on the scene and patches of blue sky above.
At least it’s a nice day for it, he thought. And he thought: His mom was right—a walk probably would be good for him. It wouldn’t kill him anyway.
He put his head down and picked up his fork and continued eating his breakfast. He did not look up at the window again.
So he never noticed the green van parked out there, beyond the cherry tree, beyond the lawn, across the street against the far curb. He never even saw it.
But the people inside the van—they saw Rick. They had a camera with a powerful zoom lens trained on his window, and they watched him on the video screens they had set up behind the van’s driver’s seat.
And they waited for him to come out.